Khalid Siddique, Senior Manager Data Experience, du is taking part in a panel discussion entitled, “Competing through service differentiation”, on the Day One of the 4th annual LTE MENA conference, taking place on the 11th-13th May 2014 at the Conrad, Dubai, UAE. Ahead of the show he tells us a little about what Du is doing to attract and retain customers.

What carriers around the world have impressed you when it comes to innovative data packages and service propositions?

I believe Verizon Wireless has been at the forefront of LTE offerings. It has dominated America well with its LTE coverage and has impressive data and handset offers such as shareable data and cloud storage.

Is the volume of data usage you are seeing on the network, and the apps customers favour in line with what you expected when you launched 4G?

In the UAE the smartphone penetration is growing by day. Yes, we were anticipating huge data traffic on the network and certainly we’ve boosted our data centric offers recently with data sharing and value bundling.

What is the key to making customers happy with their data experience?

The key is to win the customer’s confidence with regards to data charging, to prevent bill shock and deliver superior data experience. For example, du has launched a data manager smartphone app, which provides which provides superior control to customer on their data subscriptions. When customers use up their data package their browsing is stopped till they buy a top-up or upgrade to a bigger data bundle.

Are VAS such as mobile music or Wi-Fi access important for attracting and retaining customers?

Definitely. There are some tie-ups being made with leading music companies that would definitely help operators build loyalty and appeal to youth through offers. This will boost customer data usage and retention. Wi-Fi access is one of the key must haves for operators, to meet data demand and provide quality data access to enrich the customer experience indoors.

Will advances such as LTE Advanced bring a better customer speeds or just help with network capacity?

With its speed, LTE has enriched the customers experience compared with previous generation of networks. LTE-Advanced will certainly help customers with speed hungry applications but currently LTE-Advanced will do more for operators, by building capacity. We will soon start hearing the announcements from industry players upscaling to LTE-Advanced.

Why is the LTE MENA conference an important date in the diary?

LTE MENA is the best event about LTE. Participants can experience the industry’s best practices, products and technologies. It’s a must attend event!